The automotive industry is changing, in part, because the vehicle's power sources are moving from utilizing fossil fuels to utilizing renewable fuels (e.g., electricity). More vehicles are utilizing advanced driver-assistance systems (“ADAS”), which provides varying levels of driver assistance (e.g., adaptive cruise control (“ACC”), forward collision warning (“FCW”), etc.).
As more and more vehicles are equipped with electric engines and ADAS, the circuits embedded within the vehicle will correspondingly need to be equipped to handle many of the problems that face the circuits in other operating environments (e.g., smartphones, servers, etc.). One such problem is handling, and potentially correcting, errors within data stored in memory. Errors can occur anywhere containing data (e.g., memory, caches, buses, interconnects, etc.). Unlike traditional operating environments, the circuits in vehicles may not be able to go offline to conduct tests to establish the veracity of the data stored in its subsystems. For example, a vehicle may be engaged in a complex ADAS-based use case that does not have sufficient offline time to conduct tests, including, but not limited to, potential restoration of data.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method for utilizing error-correcting code (“ECC”) operations in circuits embedded within a vehicle while the circuits in operation, even if the operation is within a vehicle that cannot “power down” for a self-test of its data.